Commercial Installations of FPE Federal Pacific Electric Stab-Lok® Electrical Panel & Circuit Breaker - potential fire & other safety hazards:

Here we explain the possible fire and shock hazards associated with business or commercial installations of Federal Pacific Electric Stab-Lok® circuit breakers and service panels. We include commercial-grade or commercially-installed Federal Pacific Electic & Federal Electric panels & circuit breaker photos.

The current status of FPE Stab-Lok®equipment hazards, recalls, product safety research, and consumer warnings can be found in companion articles at this website. Page top photo courtesy of Raleigh NC home inspector Steve Smallman.

Replacement FPE Stab-Lok® circuit breakers are unlikely to reduce the failure risk of this equipment. We recommend that FPE Stab-Lok® electrical panels be replaced entirely or the entire panel bus assembly be replaced, regardless of FPE model number or FPE year of manufacture. We do not sell circuit breakers nor any other products. 

Federal Pacific Electric Stab-Lok® Circuit Breaker Hazard Current Status, Failures, Research, & History

For information on FPE Stab-Lok® equipment that can be copied to any website, see FPE Stab-Lok® Hazard Summary Page for Public Use

Federal Pacific Electric "Stab-Lok® " service panels and breakers are a latent hazard and FPE circuit breakers can fail to trip in response

Do commercial Federal Pacific Electric Panels have the same hazards as their residential products?

Do you have any opinion on FPE panels in commercial buildings, these are 3-phase, both sub-panels and MDP, circa 1985, and I do not see any labels on the panels indicating Stab-Loc?

- Steve Smallman, Raleigh, N.C., Email: steve@stevesmallman.com, Tel: 919.669.3639 [Mr. Smallman is a professional home inspector working in Raleigh, NC. - Ed.] 11/17/2012

Opinion Reply

We'd love to imagine that the commercial Federal Pacific Electric Stab-Lok® equipment is safer than the residential line, as that would make life easier for quite a few folks. And if we could confirm that these products use a different bus and breaker design from the Stab-Lok series, indeed that would leave the safety question at least more open.

Indeed, Steve, other inspectors in the Raleigh area have also reported FPE panel installations to us - they were common in your state in both residential and commercial installations, as would be obvious from the label on this FPE Panel sent to us by Chris Chamberlin.

You'll note that this commecial electrical panel is labelled "Federal Pacific Electric Co., Raleigh N.C." and omits the term Stab-Lok.

A short and acccurate answer is that we do not have adequate field failure report data nor independent study data to confirm the performance of commecial FPE circuit breaker panel installations, but in my OPINION, if the internal bus and breaker design can be confirmed to be of the Stab-Lok series it is very likely that the same safety concerns pertain as well.

Considering the Federal Pacific Electric company history, recent FPE tudies that confirm the extent of the hazard, FPE field failure reports, label switching, test falsification, loss of UL labeling, and reports of actual swapping of breakers into and out of their proper amperage rating range, and adding that there was a very long history of problems extending across the product line and across many years of production, one cannot not  provide reassurance about safety the equipment in your photos.

My suggestion would be to pull the covers on these electrical panels (as required by most home inspection standards even though those standards were not written for commercial building surveys), to permit a closer examination of the bus and breaker design.

One can confirm the Stab-Lok design by looking at the bus or breaker details, labeling or not.

Our photo at left of an FPE Stab Lok E-bus design is the sort of connection you are looking for, and it's quite unmistakable. In an electrical panel that is not fully populated, it is not necessary to remove any circuit breakers to find this detail. Just look.

Photos & details are at FPE & FP IDENTIFICATION, HOW TO.

In our Federal Electric panel photo below, this commecial (3-phase) Federal Electric® panel uses an open-slot circuit breaker bus, as you can see in our photo.

The label omits not only the term "Stab Lok" but also Federal Pacific Electric® is not used, just Federal Electric. Taking a look at the circuit breakers that were installed in Federal Electric panels, their labels as well as their physical design confirmed that this too was a Stab-Lok® design.

The only FPE products that we are sure don't merit a warning of of the FPE Stab-Lok hazard are, in my OPINION, the fused equipment.

Watch out: among Federal Pacific Electric Fuse panels you will find some "hybrid" models such as this FPE panel photo submitted by Ralph Specht.

This service panel uses an FPE Stab-Lok design main breaker and mains in the panel body that in turn feed individually-fused circuits. The presence of the Stab-Lok breakers in this panel is an argument for its replacement even though it also containse (safer) Edison-base type fuses.

And of course as most FPE and other brand fused electrical panels now found in buildings are more than 50 years old, there are likely to be other reasons (such as obsolesence, deterioration, modifications) to be recommending replacement.

Commercial Canadian FPE Stab-Lok® panels and Federal Pacific or Federal Pioneer Circuit Breakers

Please see FEFD for the full version of this article.

In May 1999 we learned from Schneider Canada that Federal pioneer circuit breakers sold by that company are re-named from Federal Pacific circuit breakers and that two 15-amp single-pole models NC015 and NC015CP made between August 1, 1996 and June 11, 1997 have been recalled.

The Schneider and Federal Pioneer as well as some Square-D recall notices are available here.

We asked the company engineer with whom we spoke if he could determine if Federal Pioneer and Federal Pacific components sold in Canada were made in the U.S. or if tooling used to produce them was identical with that used in the U.S. If this is the case (as one might expect based on economies of production) one should consider the possibility that other defects reported in the U.S. may also appear in Canadian installations.

The Federal Pioneer Warranty Alert was issued by the Ontario New Home Warranty program in October 1997 and provides for circuit breaker replacement. Schneider Canada is an electrical supplier whose product lines combine those previously marketed under the names Federal Pacific Electric, Federal Pioneer, Square-D, Tele Mechanique, Modicon, and Merlin Gerin.

Carl Grasso, an attorney who researched FPE failures for the New Jersey class action suit explains that since a portion of the safety defect with FPE breakers may be due to variations during manufacture, and since Canadian breakers may be manufactured in a different plant from those made in the U.S., it is possible that the field performance of Canadian breakers may be different than the U.S. design. Schneider Canada, the Federal Pioneer parent company, has not provided information regarding design or manufacture changes over the U.S. design, nor provided test data regarding the product.

As of May 2008 we have had a few reports of failures in the Canadian Federal Pioneer (Stab-Lok® ) equipment and also reports of failures of "replacement" FPE circuit breakers installed in U.S. panels. Having inspected some Canadian FPE (Federal Pioneer-brand) electric panels, we observed two ongoing concerns:

1.) the same bus design was used as in the U.S. equipment. I've seen very poor retention of breakers in the bus - in one house the breaker was held in place by duct tape, as the spring design in the contact of the breaker where it plugs into the special opening in the bus appears not to have held the breaker in place. We have also seen breakers modified with their inserting pins bent and modified to fit a breaker into a slot where it did not belong - a step that is impossible with other breaker designs.

2.) A similar or identical panel design may expose consumers to panel arcing and fires regardless of changes in the breakers themselves.

For people who are unable to promptly replace an FPE Stab-Lok® electrical panel we recommend that you should be sure you have working smoke detectors properly installed and at least you will be able to sleep at night. Also see CAN'T AFFORD A NEW ELECTRIC PANEL? or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

 

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